


The End of All Things

by Sapphy, SapphyWatchesYouSleep (Sapphy)



Series: The Eternal Batman Universe [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, Bathing/Washing, Blood, Fever, Fever Dreams, Future Fic, Gen, Gore, Graphic Description, Illnesses, Injury, Joker should be a warning all by himself, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Sickfic, Suicide Attempt, Surgery, There aren't enough tags to warn you guys how gross this gets, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:15:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1604834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/Sapphy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/SapphyWatchesYouSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can only loose so many friends before you start relying on your enemies.</p><p> </p><p>In a future where the JLA is disbanded, the Bat-family are all grown up and Bruce is older than he ever wanted to be, Joker's escaped, again, and Bruce is supposed to take him back to Arkham, again, and he's not sure he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navyOwel](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=navyOwel).



> I'd advise reading the first in the series in order to understand this. This is the story of how Joker first came to be living in the Batcave.
> 
> Dedicated to navyOwel, who's been my biggest cheerleader on this series, and never fails to leave a lovely comment. I hope this lives up to expectations!

These days Gotham’s criminal underworld is rife with rumours of how cruel and sadistic the new management of Arkham are, and looking at Joker, newly escaped, Bruce believes every one of them.

Joker’s never been what you might call healthy looking, but he’s always been so full of vitality that it seemed it might overflow at any moment. Now, for the first time that Bruce can remember, he looks tired, dark rings under his eyes, and a hopeless slump to his shoulders.

They’ve shaved his head, so that his scalp is covered in green fuzz, like a pool table, and he’s still wearing his asylum uniform, the long sleeves of his straight jacket trailing behind him like broken wings, the fabric dark from the filthy water of Gotham bay. When he’d first picked up the call, IGA reporting to the GCPD that Joker had killed two guards with a spoon, and then swum to the mainland, Bruce hadn’t believed it. Gotham bay would be a challenging swim for a fit man in daylight. At night the currents would sweep you onto unseen rocks, and not one in a hundred would actually make it across.

Now Joker is before him, he can see just how much that swim had cost him, every line of his body radiating exhaustion, and the torn skin of his feet leaving a trail of gore-streaked footprints behind him.

“You’re looking rough, Batsy,” Joker observes, and his voice is husky, like he’s been screaming. Bruce almost laughs at irony of Joker criticising his appearance, when Joker himself looks like he’s one strong breeze away from total collapse. “Been missing me?”

“Been missing the old days,” Bruce says, because there doesn’t seem much point in lying, not now. It’s been too long, and Joker knows him too well.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Joker says thoughtfully. “Modern times aren’t all bad. Have you seen Creeper’s new costume? It’s hee-larious!”

Bruce smiles, just a little, partly because Creeper’s costume (and by costume he means spandex mini shorts) are indeed ridiculous, but mostly because Joker sounds like his old self again, and there’s something immensely reassuring about that.

Since the JLA fell apart, Bruce has been drifting, a man without an anchor in a world he barely recognises. Tim is getting older at a rate that terrifies him, Jason’s gone, Dick and Babs are semi-retired. Even most of the villains are gone. Once, Bruce would have been glad to be rid of Two-face and Penguin, but now he almost misses them, their faces missing from crime scenes just another thing that’s strange.

Only Joker is eternal, as changeless and impermenent as a river.

Technically he’s not the only one. There’s the Super-kids, and Creeper, the Savages and the al-Ghuls and Red and the Wolf, but somehow it’s only Joker’s presence that makes him feel anchored.

And now Joker’s here, looking the worst Bruce has ever seen him, even on the numerous times he was mistaken for dead, and Bruce knows his duty is to beat this broken man into submission and deliver him back to his torturers and he just… can’t. It’s not in him to do it.

“What’s up Batsy,” Joker asks, sounding worried. “You haven’t hit me, or threatened me, or anything.” He peers at Bruce suspiciously and asked, “You’re not sick are you?”

“Sick of all this,” Bruce says, and he has no idea why he’s saying all this, why he’s revealing this to Joker of all people, except that Joker always listens, even if he then mocks.

“You don’t mean this?!” Joker demands, gesturing between the two of them, the sleeve of his straight jacket flapping.

“All of it,” Bruce says, with feeling. He’s been growing gradually more and more disolutioned, more exhausted, and this, realising that his nemesis is the only person he feels any real connection to anymore, is the final straw. He’s sick of it all.

“No,” Joker says angrily. “You don’t mean it. You’re Batman! You can’t give up, it’s not allowed!”

That makes Bruce angry, the first real emotion he’s felt in what seems like months. It’s such a shock to feel something strongly, to feel anything, that he doesn’t push it down like he knows he should. He embraces it, lets the anger fill him up until all he wants is to hurt Joker, to spoil his precious game.

He reaches up and pulls back his cowl, dragging it over his head to hang limply at his back.

“I give up,” he says. “This is me, giving up. You win.”

“No no no no no no,” Joker cries, his voice growing panicked. “No, you can’t do that, it’s cheating! You’re ruining the game!”

“I’m not playing the game,” Bruce says, perversely pleased with the strength of Joker’s reaction. It’s nice to feel he’s important to someone, even if it is his nemesis. “Not anymore.”

Joker is shaking his head violently, repeating ‘no’ under his breath. Bruce can see bald patches that look like they could be burns on the side of his head. Some experimental form of shock therapy maybe. You’d think by now that the staff at Arkham would have learned that Joker is incurable, though whatever new treatment they’re trying is obviously strong enough for Joker to have found it very unpleasant, if his twitching is anything to go by.

Suddenly Joker stills, still bent double, and tips his head back to stare straight into Bruce’s eyes.

“You’re selfish Batsy,” he snarls, “selfish selfish selfish. I go to all the trouble of breaking out of that hellhole, and you show me your skin face and tell me you don’t love me anymore! Did you ever stop and think how this would make me feel Bats? Didja? Well, I’m not going to stand for it, ya hear me? I will not be treated like this!”

He’s produced a pistol from somewhere, holding it awkwardly through the fabric of his sleeve, one finger working through a hole in the fabric to curl around the trigger. Bruce wonders where he got it from. One of the guards he killed, probably. He should be angrier about that, he knows, they were innocent men, just doing a job, but looking at Joker he can’t bring himself to condemn his nemesis’ actions. If you back a rabid animal into a corner, you must expect to be bitten. He goes out to face the Joker always with that knowledge at the forefront of his mind. The staff of Arkham must have known that Joker would respond to violence in kind, and yet they let him have cutlery, and put armed men where he could get to them. The fault was with IGA. Joker was simply acting in accordance with his nature.

“I’m not going to fight you, Joker,” Bruce says tiredly. “I’m not going to fight anyone.”

“Nu-uh. No. You have to fight. You’re Batman. Fighting me is what you do!”

“Not anymore.” Bruce feels a strange sort of calm suffusing him. He’s probably going to die, Clarke had made it very clear that, in his case, immortal does not mean invulnerable, but he finds he’s strangely okay with that. Better at Joker’s hand than anyone else’s. There’s a pleasing sort of symmetry to it, to be killed by the monster he created. Frankenstein like, the act of creation will be his destruction.

“I’ll kill you Batsy,” Joker says, his voice suspicious. “I’ll shoot you.”

“I know,” Bruce says.

Joker’s hands are shaking. Time and again Bruce has seen evidence of Joker’s iron self-control, of the almost supernatural degree of control he exerts over his body. The thought that Joker is so badly hurt that he can’t keep his hands from shaking maddens Bruce. For a minute he thinks of saving himself, of pitting himself against the might of IGA, maybe taking them to court, but then he remembers that Bruce Wayne is dead and that he’s a wanted criminal, one who walks free only because the name of Jim Gordon still means something. Another generation and his legacy will be forgotten, and Bruce will be just another freak in a mask.

“It’s okay,” he tells Joker, because it is. “I’m tired. Tired of all of this.” He laughs bitterly. “You won, Joker. All these years, you finally won. Congratulations. I give up!”

The bullet hurts, going in, like the always do. He feels his rib crack, hears the sound of it echo inside his own head, and then a burst of pain so severe it almost doesn’t seem real. He’s choking, trying desperately to draw breath, aware vaguely that he’s flying back from the force of the impact, but unable to focus on anything except trying to draw breath. Every inhale feels like he’s being stabbed, sharp shocking pain filling his chest.

He’s lying on his back, vision fading in and out. Hypo-volemic shock. Knowing the words doesn’t make it easier to deal with. He wonders, in a vague way, why he’s not dead, Joker is a crack shot, and then he remembers the tremors, the way his hands had shaken on the handle of the gun.

There’s something wet on his face, but he can’t see anything now, only bright white light. There’s a sound, somewhere above him, like someone crying. He wants to comfort them, tell them it’s okay, he doesn’t mind dying, but the words wont come.

There’s a voice, faint, the last thing he hears before he passes out completely. It says, “I never wanted to win, Bruce. Not like this.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first real attempt at writing Joker's POV, so please be kind!
> 
> Oh, and I am fully aware that it takes days for necrosis to set it. Joker, on the other hand, is not. Also he's running a fever, so his judgement isn't the best.
> 
> Oh, and the Batcave at this point is being controlled by a prototype version of BC. Similar logic circuits, but with far less in the way of personality and independent thought.

There’s a moment of complete stillness after Batsy’s eyes close, the closest thing to peace Joker can ever remember experiencing, everything quiet and frozen like time has moved on without him, left him alone in this little sinkhole with his Bat, and then Batsy’s chest moves, just a little, and Joker realizes he’s not dead. _Neither of them_ are dead.

There are tears on Joker’s face. He doesn't know where they came from. He's never cried, not since Batsy created him. Maybe it's raining, just on him. He wipes them away irritably. He’s got no time to lie around being rained on by invisible clouds. Batsy needs him.

Batsy is unconscious, and his breathing is labored. Joker lifts Batsy’s head a little, out of curiosity, and watches as he coughs up blood. That's almost definitely not a good sign. Harley used to get very worried when he coughed up blood. (He's been thinking of Harley a lot recently, missing her grating presence and irritating chatter, because she might have been infuriatingly asinine, but she'd also been _his_ , wholly and completely, and just lately things he wants keep being taken away from him. He'd always loved how resistant Harley was to anyone trying to take her away from him.)

The wound on Batsy's chest is bleeding a lot, probably too much, slicking the armor. He runs his fingers through it thoughtfully and tastes some. It's rich and thick. Arterial. It's also delicious, and Joker lets himself be distracted from his mission for a minute while he fills himself full of as much of Batsy as he can manage.

It's only when Batsy moans, a low pained noise that Joker finds contradictorily both terrifying and appealing, that he remembers he's a man on a mission.

He sets Batsy's head down as carefully as he can (or tries to, because his fingers aren't doing what he tells them, and they're slick with blood and saliva, and he ends up dropping him, and his head goes 'clonk' when it hits the concrete, but that probably doesn't matter) and approaches the edge of the building cautiously, not quite trusting his legs not to give out and tip him over the edge. Far below he can make out the dark shape of the Batmobile.

He makes his way slowly back to the Bat, irritated beyond measure with the weakness of his legs, and rummages around in the ridiculous utility belt he always wears. He finds a lot of interesting things, a gas mask, some pepper spray (he pockets that) and even a condom, but nothing that could help them get down the building. Briefly, he wonders whether he ought to call an ambulance, but he dismisses it. Batsy wouldn’t like it, and anyway, he’s Joker’s. No one else gets to touch him. No, he just needs to get Batsy down to his car, everything else can wait. One. Thing. At a time.

He makes a circuit of the roof, looking for anything that might help, and realizes that down bellow, there's a fire escape. It doesn't reach all the way to the roof, stopping at the level of the windows of the top floor flats, but the drop isn't far, and he's already shot Batsy and dropped him on his head, so pushing him off a building probably won't make things worse.

Batsy is heavy, and Joker can't get a proper grip on him with his stupid stiff fingers, and his feet won't get traction because the blood is making them slick. His whole body is trying to give out on him, arms shaking with exhaustion, vision blurring. He takes a deep breath (and hey, feels like he’s cracked a rib, he doesn’t even remember doing that one) and closes his eyes and does what he always does when the weird twisted shell he inhabits tries to wrestle control from his mind. He reminds himself why he’s doing this, what he wants.  
He wants fun, and to be happy. He’s not sure which of those two is more important to him right now (it changes so often he’s rarely sure of which of the two matters more) but it doesn’t matter because the two are so closely linked for him that they’re inextricable. He wants fun, and fun means Batsy, because all his other toys give up on him, or get bored, or get broken (Harley, beautiful Harley, her blonde hair all matted up with her own blood, wearing nothing by a toe-tag and a body bag). But Batsy never does, Batsy loves him, and will always play with him and _Batsy is important!_ Batsy is more important than anything else, because Batsy is fun, and that means that the screams from his aching muscles and his bleeding feet and that rib he doesn't remember cracking don't matter. They don't matter because _they're not fun and Batsy is._

It takes a long moment of unwelcome self-reflection, but at last he's got his body back under his own control, at least enough to begin dragging Batsy towards the edge. He leaves a trail of his own skin from where he has to dig his feet in, and he drops Batsy on his head twice more, but he makes it, and topples his Bat over the edge, to land shoulder first on the unforgiving metal below. He'll probably be fine. Unconscious people take less fall damage.

Joker jumps down after him, and he takes no fall damage at all, but that's because he long since learned the art of relaxing all his muscles until he might as well be unconscious, and anyway, his top is made out of rubber and his bottom is made out of springs.

It's something of a mystery to Joker how he manages to get Batsy down the fire escape to the waiting car, even with his body once again under his unflinching control. His bones feel like they've been replaced with jelly, and his joints are filled with fire. He can't grip, and he can't pull, and the idea of trying to carry Batsy is so funny he has to stop and lean against the brick wall and laugh. On the other hand, a large number of things are a mystery to him, particularly the things his body proves capable of, so he doesn't question it.

He's more exhausted than he can ever remember being, and for the first time in what feels like years, he actually wants to sleep. (He doesn't sleep, hasn't since the accident, but sometimes even he needs to pass out, for a few minutes, just enough to keep all the colors from blurring together and his brain slowing down to the point where he wants to rip the top of his own skull. Just that much). He's not used to denying himself anything he wants (other people deny him things all the time, but that's an entirely different thing from self-control) but then, as he keeps reminding himself, he wants Batsy to live far more than he wants something as petty as rest. Rest is what his body needs, but Batsy is what his mind needs, and he's always been more interested in brains than bodies.

He knows from experience that trying to get into the Batmobile is a bad idea, burns on his fingers and tingling in his toes and all his hair standing on end like Straw Peter, but there must be a way in, he's never seen Bats use a key. Inspiration strikes, and he eases one of the gauntlets off Batsy's hand (eases may not be the right word, he thinks he hears a finger or two snap, but that's small fry compared to all that bleeding) and slips it onto his own. It doesn't fit at all, his hands are slimmer than Batsy's and his fingers far longer, but when he touches the side of the car, the top springs open.

It takes three tries, and some pained groans from Batsy and a whole lot of blood on Joker's clothes, but he finally manages to get the Bat's body into the passenger seat of the car. The second gauntlet is easier to get off than the first, once he discovers that there's a clip to release them. He manages to tear up one of his nails scrabbling at it, but he's never minded a little pain, and anyway, the pain of his torn and bloodied feet distracts him from the finger.

The world is starting to go more than a little hazy by the time he's got himself in the passenger seat, Batsy's gloves crushing his delicate fingers, but again it's familiar, and easily ignored. Joker's world is usually in terrifyingly vivid focus, unable to ignore any of the little things other people so easily dismiss. Now everything’s muted and disjointed, nothing coming into focus. Maybe, he thinks fuzzily, this is what normal people feel like all the time. It's not so bad, but he wouldn't want to live like this.

The car isn't moving. Maybe Joker should be driving it, but he doesn't know where to go, and while normally he could figure out how to operate something this complex in seconds, he's not sure he's totally compos mentis right now.

"Home," he says, in the hope that the car is listening. "Take him home."

He passes into blissful unconsciousness as the engine roars to life beneath him.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The car wakes him when they get back to wherever they're going. It takes him a moment to work out where he is and why there's an infernal beeping, right next to his ear. Then his hand brushes the gauntlet of the Batsuit, lying in his lap, and it all comes flooding back, knowledge crashing over him like a tsunami.

The top of the car is open, revealing a cave, bats swooping overhead, disturbed by the noise most likely, the air damp with spray from the waterfall that takes up one wall. It’s almost exactly how he imagined Batsy would live, and he feels a deep sense of satisfaction at being able to read his nemesis so well.

"What now?" he asks, because so far asking the bat-tech what to do has proved a good plan. Lights come on, as if in answer to his question, illuminating an area of the cave done up in shining chrome, obviously a med-bay of some kind.

Batsy looses one of his boots when Joker drags him up and out of the car, but otherwise Joker manages not to hurt him. He's still breathing, but so shallowly that it's almost unnoticeable. Joker still feels groggy, but better for his sleep.

There's a metal and glass table, very high tech looking, and it reminds Joker of the automated treatment facilities they used in the Arkham infirmary, so he heaves Batsy onto it, and examines it. If it is what he thinks it is, there must be controls somewhere.

There's a glass panel at one end of the table, and when Joker pokes it it comes to life, lighting up with pretty blue lights, nearly the same shade as Batsy's eyes.

'Select medical problem' is says, 'or select symptoms'. He prods at the word 'symptom', and it must understand because a picture of a man (or a ken doll maybe, no genitals or nipples) appears on the screen. 'Select affected areas', the screen tells him, so he pokes at the chest, and then at the left side of the chest when it zooms in.

‘Select problem type’ it suggests. And yeah, this tech is definitely Batsy’s because there’s ‘bullet wound’ second from the top, just below stab wound and just above acid. Joker’s touched to see he makes all three top slots.

When he selects bullet wound, it asks him all sorts of questions, about how much blood Batsy's lost, and how fast his pulse is, and all sort of things that Joker doesn't know. (It's okay though, because the clever machine has an option for 'I don't know' and he just hits that over and over until it stops asking stupid questions.) There's a chair on the corner of the chrome area, a big soft leather one that looks out of place in the clinical environment. Joker collapses into it, and watches with interest as mechanical arms fold out from the sides of the table and begin the carefully remove the Bat's hard casing, revealing the soft pink breakable thing inside.

An oxygen mask covers Batsy's skin face, the machine taking over breathing for him, and Joker wonders, vaguely, whether the Bat will have any brain damage. It had been a long time since he shot him, years and eons and lifetimes ago, and he hadn't done anything much to stop the bleeding. Probably most people would be dead, but Batsy is tough, tough as shoe leather, and he'll be okay because he's fun, the most fun out of everyone Joker's ever met, and he has to be okay because if he isn't, Joker will be _bored_!

The machine is cutting into Batsy, like something from a really good horror movie, the kind that Harley used to watch between her fingers, peeling back skin and fat until Joker can see Batsy's bones, all white and shiny under the gore.

There's a drill, like the ones dentists use (and Joker has never been to the dentist, but he's robbed one or two and some of their toys are _fun_ ) and it punches down through the solid muscle of Batsy's chest, and Joker's not a particularly sexual being, never has been, but even he has to admit that that's viscerally sexy, watching his Bat being spread open and penetrated by this machine. A burst of laughter forces its way out of his throat, because he's about to pass out and he's bleeding and his ribs are cracked and everything hurts and Batsy is getting surgery in front of him and he's _getting hard_ and it's the most ridiculous thing his ridiculous body has ever done and it's hilarious.

He does pass out eventually, slipping out of consciousness around the time that the machine starts feeding a long clear piece of pipe into Batsy's chest, presumably to try and suck the blood out of his lungs. Joker thinks that he'd have done it himself, if the machine had only asked, and he passes out still chuckling to himself.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When he comes too, the room is quiet and dark, the only noise the machine breathing for Batsy, a single low light shining down on the table.

At first he’s not sure what woke him, but then he feels it, the burning, his whole body burning up like someone dipped him in kerosene and took a match to him, and that’s not as funny as it should be, because his head hurts and his throat is dry and his ribs ache and his shoulders and arms ache and his feet _throb_.

He moves position, trying to ease the pain in his shoulders at least, and there must be potion sensors in the med-bay, because the lights come on, not flaring and blinding him, but slowly increasing in brightness until he can see the room clearly again.

He can see everything clearly, the med-bay, and the cave, and the bats, and the laughing face carved into the wall by his head, and the way the waterfall hides the entrance, and the night sky, and the stars, and the way the floor crawls and writhes.

Joker sees lots of things, far more than other people, even Batsy, but now he feels them too. He has always known that he is a paradox, both infinite and infinitesimal, a being of pure id who works for a higher purpose, a lover of chaos who hates when the world is chaotic. But now he can feel that paradox, feel the strange rough part where the two halves of his soul don't mesh, and it makes him laugh and laugh, until tears are rolling down his face and the strain on his cracked rib in making him feel sick, and that just makes him laugh all the harder because it's all so damn _funny_! And why does no-one else ever see that? Everything's so hilarious and sometimes he feels like the loneliest person in the world because he's the only one who can _see it_.

At last he calms down, the laughs subsiding into chuckles. He's got things to do. He has to look after himself, because normally that's Batsy's job, or sometimes Harley, but they're not there, and so he has to fix himself, keep himself together until Batsy wakes up. He imagines himself falling apart, a cascade of limbs landing on the floor, plink plonk splat, and he laughs again, because _that's what it feels like to be him_ , and he's so damn pleased with himself for thinking of such a nice metaphor.

His ribs are cracked or broken, he's never known how to tell the difference, and that means they need to be wrapped. His medical knowledge is sketchy, but he thinks he remembers the doctors at Arkham doing that, last time the guards let him be treated. He might have killed the nurse when she'd finished, but he's not sure. Memory is always tricky for him, but right now it's melting through his fingers like sand.

His feet are swollen, so that he can't put them flat on the floor, and that's hilarious too, because it makes him waddle like an old man, or a Penguin. Dear old Pengy. He misses Pengy. He picks up his left foot and tries to twist it round so he can look at the bottom, but his joints aren't bending like they ought to, and he ends up toppling over and jarring his ribs, and that makes him laugh again.

He rolls onto his back, and twists his foot and head until he's looking at the sole of his foot. The flesh is swollen and black, even when he scrubs away some of the dirt. That's not good. He has vague memories of one of his goons letting a cut get infected, one of the really crazy ones who never look after themselves properly, and the flesh around the wound had gone black and rotten, and Harley has cut it out with a butterfly knife, good old Harley, so sweet and kind and all covered in blood, and the man had screamed and screamed till Joker could barely hear his cartoons, and Harley had told him that if he didn't let her do it then the infection would spread and he'd lose the whole arm.

Joker had wanted her to leave it, because think of all the _jokes_ he could make with a one-armed henchman, but Harley had insisted, and he'd generally let her have her way when it came to the goons.

He needs a knife. A potato peeler. Something sharp to cut out the infected flesh before it spreads and he has to cut off his whole foot. Or a leg. He imagines the blackness seeping up his body, while he desperately cuts away slices of himself until all that’s left is a head. Maybe Batsy would keep the head in one of those glass domes they put stuffed owls in; he could sit on Batsy's desk, in his glass jar, and watch him work.

He pats his clothes vaguely, still lying flat on his back, and then remembers that he’s still wearing his Asylum uniform. He'd had a spoon (why had he never scooped eyeballs out with a spoon before? It was _so fun_! They wobbled like Jell-O and the people screamed and sobbed and it was _hilarious_!) and he still had a gun, somewhere, although maybe he'd left it in Batsy's car, but that didn't help.

One of Batsy's shiny metal throwing bats, maybe. They’re sharp, but probably not sharp enough. Better than nothing. He'll use his fingers, if he has to, but a blade would make it quicker, and he isn't sure how long he’s going to stay conscious this time.

Maybe the table... He rolls himself onto his front and crawls on knees and elbows to the shiny metal table Batsy’s lying on. There’s a screen, he remembers vaguely, a screen that gives you what you need, but when he pulls himself up enough to be able to see it, the words are all nonsense, just made up symbols that means nothing. Well no-one could use that; even Edward would think it was silly. (What happened to Edward? He was everywhere and then he was nowhere and he'd had a base just up the road from Joker, and now he remembers, remembers Riddler laughing and laughing like he'd _finally got the joke_ and then his face had frozen in the fixed grin Joker loved so much, the one that had blood at the corners because no face but his was meant to smile that wide, and that was what had happened to Edward) but if no-one could read the display, there must be something else...

"Scalpel," he says, and his voice is barely there, so quiet but nearly as husky at Batsy, and that makes him laugh too, everything makes him laugh, but the sound doesn't come out properly, more like a wheeze, and he tries again and this time his voice is at least audible. "Scalpel."

A drawer slides out of the table, and when he manages to shuffle over to it, he finds it contains exactly what he asked for. A scalpel, and three spare blades, all wrapped in shiny shiny plastic.

There's something else he need. "Smelly stuff," he tries, but nothing happens. "The stinging smelly stuff Harley always made me put on open wounds. You can make it explode."

The table is obviously very clever, cleverer than him even, because another drawer slides open and there's a bottle labeled 'peroxide' and some cotton balls. And then another opens, bopping him gently on the head, and that one has gauze and medical tape and miles and miles of bandages.

"Thanks," he says, because it seems the thing to do, and tries to take the things, only to remember that he’s still wearing the straightjacket. He’s stiff and sore, but he’s spent his life escaping from straightjackets, so it only takes him a moment to tear it off, even with his ribs protesting at every movement.

Finally free of the constricting fabric, he takes his prizes back to the chair he'd slept in.

Contorting himself enough to get a good grip on his feet is far harder than it should be. The rubber in his joints has started to atrophy, he’s hardening up like an old eraser. There’s an unpleasant cracking noise, and pain shoots up his side from his hip, and now at last he can move his leg properly, even if he can’t seem to feel his foot. So much the better, really, because indifferent as he might be to pain, this is really going to hurt.

The first cut is small, a test rather than a cure. No normal man would be able to bring themselves to do this, and Joker needs that reassurance before he starts that he is not a normal man, and will never be. Needs to know that he can still mutilate himself without flinching when he needs to.

He’s got almost no feeling in that foot, which makes it easy to begin cutting up strips of skin, careful as he knows how to be not to damage the muscle underneath. He probably only needs to cut around the wounds themselves, but better safe than sorry as… someone, used to say. Who did say that? Not his mother, he doesn’t remember her, and Harley had never liked safe. A woman though, definitely.

He cuts another strip of skin, careful careful not to let it tear when he reaches his toes, and now he remembers who said that. It had been Spoiler, out training Red and the Wolf back when they were still just baby Batlings. She’d been talking about safety lines, he thinks. He’s not a great believer in safe, but she’d sounded like a mom, and even he knows that mothers know best, and he’s not sure he knows best just now, not with everything swimming like this, so he might as well take her advice and be thorough.

The skin on his heel is hard as leather, and when he pushes the scalpel a little harder than necessary in an attempt to get it in, it goes right through and stabs into the muscle, sending a spasm up his leg.

There’s nowhere to put the strips of skin, that he can see, so he lays them across his knee in nice straight lines. They look like ribbons. When his hair grows back, he could grow it out and tie it back with a strip of his own skin.

It’s difficult to know exactly where to stop, but Joker thinks if he flays the tops of his feet as well as the bottoms, he’ll probably get carried away and end up doing his legs as well, and that would just be inconvenient, so he errs on the side of caution and leaves a strip of skin around the edge of his sole untouched.

All in all the first foot doesn’t take nearly as much time as he was expecting, and isn’t nearly as traumatic. He’s just about to move on, when a tingling sensation all up his left side reminds him exactly why it hadn’t been so unpleasant.

He’s snapped his own shoulder back into place more times than he can count, but he’s never had to do it with hips before, and it takes a couple of tries to get it right. He hears the snap as the joint clicks back into place more than he feels it, and then suddenly all the feeling rushes back into that leg at once, so sudden and shocking that he retches, probably would have been sick if he’d eaten at all in the last week.

The sole of his foot feels like it’s on fire, so much pain his fuzzy brain is struggling to process it, and he laughs, huge manic gasps of laughter that make his whole body shake with the effort, because none of this is funny in the slightest, and that just makes it hilarious.

Shifting position so he can reach the other foot is the single most painful thing he’s ever done, worse than anything Batsy’s ever done, and his vision goes dark for a minute when he has to briefly rest his weight on his flayed foot.

He does this one faster, not bothering to be neat, not knowing how long he’ll stay conscious this time. He can feel darkness creeping up on his, probing at the corners of his mind. He makes a mess of his foot, gouging the muscle more than once, the pain so intense that it becomes almost transcendent, pure sensation without meaning. His vision is fading in and out, like a TV that needs its aerial adjusting, but he just keeps going, cutting by feel when his eyes fail him.

He runs a hand along the bottom of his foot, feels the blood-slick shifting muscle under his fingers, and is satisfied.

It takes a couple of tries before he can fumble the lid off the bottle of peroxide, but at least he manages and tips to contents over his feet, shrieking with laughter at the intensity of the pain. The bottle slips from his fingers when it’s empty, and he thinks vaguely that he’d meant to wrap his ribs, and that he should bandage his feet, but now his mind’s as out of focus as his eyes, and ideas and memories are proving slippery and hard to grasp, so he gasps out a last burst of giggles, and lets himself sink back into the embracing darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pleeeeeeeeease, leave a comment if you make it through this, even if it's just to tell me that you hate me and my face. I'm super nervous about posting this.


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce wakes to find himself in the familiar brightly lit environment of the cave’s med-bay, with no memory at all of how he got there.

He remembers being on the roof with Joker, remembers a gaunt face and bleeding feet. He remembers being shot, knowing that his lung was punctured and he was going to die. Remembers passing out while Joker wept (although that one must have been a hallucination, because Joker’s never cried in his life). But now here he is back in the cave, an oxygen mask feeding him air and painkillers, a drain in his chest to clear the lung.

He sits up slowly, wary of moving too fast and passing out again, and nearly faints anyway when he sees the answer to his questions, slumped in the chair Alfred had set up in the corner of the med-bay, decades ago.

Joker looks smaller asleep, all the manic energy drained out of him, leaving him both more human and more alien looking. Mostly though, he looks a mess.

It’s only the steady rise and fall of his chest that tells him Joker isn’t already dead, and even then he doesn’t quite believe his eyes. There’s so much blood, Joker’s skin stained as red as his eyes, and Bruce wonders how long he’s been like that, lying unconscious and bleeding.

Standing is a slow process, his legs shaky and weak as a newborn foal, but he forces himself up, one hand clutching the drain to keep it in place, and staggers over to the chair to look down at his nemesis.

Joker’s lying across the chair, his legs hooked over one arm, his body slumped against the back like a puppet with its strings cut. A dark spreading bruise is forming across his side, and Bruce guesses that at least one rib is cracked. The burns on the sides of his head are livid, the skin red and raw, and the one hand Bruce can see, lying loosely across its owners lap, is scratched and bruised and filthy with blood.

Bruce moves around the chair, trying to inspect more of his apparent rescuer, and that’s when he sees them.

The soles of Joker’s feet have been flayed. There’s simply no other word for it. The skin hasn’t been scratched or torn, but carefully, methodically, cut away, leaving the muscles to gleam redly in the halogen lights.

For a moment Bruce thinks it must have been done at the asylum, that Joker must have swum the bay like that, and then he sees the bloodied scalpel, abandoned beside the chair, and a nauseating little bundle of what can only be skin. For some reason, Joker had done this to himself.

He leans a little closer, careful to keep his breath and heat far enough away that they won’t disturb Joker’s sleep, and that’s when he smells the peroxide. Sterilization, he realizes with a jolt of horror. Joker’s feet must have been so badly torn and so filthy that he thought that skinning himself was the best way to prevent infection.

Bruce feels sick.

“I need medical tape,” he tells the room at large, knowing the computer Babs is building for him will be listening.

A drawer on the Automated Treatment Table slides open, and Bruce carefully tapes the drain, already more than half full with blood and fluid, to his chest.

He’s weak, and unsteady on his feet, but Joker weighs nothing, his body little more than a skeleton. As Bruce carries him over to the table he realizes that he can feel every bone, every knob of his spine and every rib, and he feels nauseous with the knowledge that he’d been the one to send Joker to the place that had done this to him. It worries him that Joker doesn’t even stir, apparently completely unaware that he’s being carried, leaving himself terrifyingly vulnerable in Bruce’s arms. Worries him to that Joker’s skin is almost unbearably hot to the touch, covered in a sheen of sweat. He’s running a severe fever. Bruce honestly can’t imagine how his nemesis had had the strength to get him home when he seems to be barely hours from death himself.

He’s hugely grateful for the upgrades Babs has made to the treatment facility. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to give Joker the treatment he needs himself, but he knows he can trust the cave to look after him. He lays Joker on the table as gently as he can, carefully cushioning the back of his head with his hands to keep from bumping it.

The list of symptoms he has to select is terrifyingly long. Malnutrition, dehydration, burns, bruises, broken bones, lacerations, probably infections, fever… the list goes on and on, until Bruce begins to feel dizzy from standing to long, and has to take a seat, hoping the table’s diagnostics will find the rest of Joker’s problems.

"Subject requires sedating," the computerized voice of the cave says. It's meant to sound like Babs, her little joke, but it's still a work in progress.

"He's pretty immune to all drugs," Bruce says. "Especially sedatives. You'll need to give him the highest dose you can."

"Acknowledged," the computer says. The needle the ATT produces is enormous, almost comical. Bruce thinks it probably still won’t be enough.

He watches silently, his attention divided between Joker’s pale form and keeping his breathing as calm and even as possible, so as not to disturb the drain, as the mechanical arms of the ATT do what he’s never managed to do, and make Joker better. (It’s his body not his mind that’s being treated, but it still feels symbolic).

After the sedative, there's two more injections, these ones both antibiotics, a probably futile attempt to prevent his wounds from getting infected. Joker needs bathing, he’s covered in sweat and grime and old blood, but the table doesn’t have a facility for that, and Bruce knows that it’ll be a while before he can lift Joker again, or even stand. The painkillers that had been mixed in with his oxygen are beginning to wear of, and although he’s been unconscious for heaven knows how long, he’s already feeling exhausted.

As Bruce watches, the ATT dresses Joker’s feet, carefully disinfecting them, and applying soft hypoallergenic pads before the bandages are applied. Bruce knows the machine provides exemplary care, knows that it’s far more hygienic, knows too that he’s in no fit state to help, but still he winces every time the mechanical arms get close to the gruesome wounds, not quite trusting a machine, even one designed by Babs, to be as gentle as he knows Joker needs.

His feet cared for, the arms of the machine carefully stretch thick fabric straps under Joker’s waist and shoulders, and use them to lift their patient into a sitting position so that they can wrap Joker’s ribs.

“Are they broken?” he asks. The screen would tell him, but it’s too far away.

“One broken, another cracked, three badly bruised,” the computer replies. “They will heal.”

Bruce isn’t sure if that’s meant to be a reassurance, or if it’s simply a statement of fact.

“He’s running a fever,” Bruce says, knowing that the machine knows this, but wanting to make doubly sure. Joker saved his life tonight, and even if it was him who’d endangered Bruce’s life in the first place, he still feels he owes a debt.

“When the other treatments are completed, he will be put on a drip,” the computer replies. “He has already had every antibiotic that might conceivably help. It is hard to predict how he will react to the treatment however, given his unusual physiognomy.”

As the computer talks, the arms carefully remove Joker’s trousers, the loose elastic waisted kind intend to be impossible to use as a weapon. Bruce knows for a fact that they fail miserably in that part of their design. He’s lost count of the number of inmates who’ve managed to turn their uniform into a weapon. Joker is wearing no underwear, and he looks even smaller and more vulnerable than before, lying naked on the smooth chrome table, his skin even paler than the bandages which cover it.

One of the arms takes Joker’s ankle in its grip, and manipulates it. Bruce is acutely aware of just how easily the machine could break human bones. It doesn’t though, it never does, just gently twists Joker’s leg until it’s satisfied, and then fits a brace to keep the hip joint still. Joker must have dislocated it at some point between shooting Bruce, and Bruce’s regaining consciousness, since not even Joker would be able to walk on a joint he’d dislocated.

Suddenly, without warning, Joker moves, his whole body going tense, and one arm flailing wildly. His eyes open, but they’re unseeing, staring unblinking at the halogen light, mouth opening and closing in silent words. Bruce actually starts up from his chair, certain Joker’s regained consciousness, but the he realizes that his nemesis is still totally unaware of the world around him, lost in some wild fever dream.

Bruce holds his breath as mechanical fingers ease Joker’s eyelids shut again, then covers his eyes with a sleep-mask, one of the cooled gel ones Bruce finds so soothing on a black-eye.

Joker’s mouth is still working, still silent, but his body relaxes again, the tension vanishing from his muscles, as though now that he can’t see the world outside, nothing can hurt him.

“What’s he saying?” Bruce asks. The computer has excellent lip-reading capabilities, and this is a rare chance to get an unfiltered look into Joker’s mind.

“Processing… ‘name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth…’”

“The Lord’s Prayer?” Bruce demands, incredulous. “Joker’s reciting the Lord’s Prayer?”

“So it seems. It does not appear to be calming him, his heart-rate is elevated quite considerably.”

How does Joker even know the Lord’s Prayer, Bruce wonders. Is this some childhood memory awakened by the fever, the last vestiges of a long ago abandoned faith, or pure instinct, copying something he’s seen bring peace to others, or just coincidence, just some piece of knowledge thrown up by the maelstrom of his fevered brain.

“Well at least it’s not bomb recipes,” Bruce says, with forced cheerfulness. He doesn’t know who he’s being cheerful for, the only person listening is a computer, but he can feel the black pit of despair lurking at the edge of his mind, and he refuses to allow himself to fall. “Record everything he says. I’m going to get some sleep. Wake me if there’s any change.”

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Bruce wakes in pain, but that’s nothing new. His whole chest aches, and every inhale sends a sharp stabbing pain through his ribcage. He sits up gingerly, wincing at the stiffness in his muscles, the result of spending a night asleep in a chair, instead of a bed.

“How is he?” he asks, when he’s caught his breath. The painkillers have worn off in the night, and the drain needs emptying, and he feels like death warmed up.

“The sedatives wore off about an hour ago. He is not fully awake, but he did attempt to rise at one point. He was however quite amenable to being restrained. He referred to me repeatedly as ‘Sharpie’.”

“Warden Sharp. He used to run Arkham, thirty years or so ago. He must think he’s back at the Asylum.”

“That was my conclusion also,” the computer agreed. It was a learning system, or supposed to be, and the first thing Dick had taught it, when Babs showed him the prototype, was first person pronouns. Apparently he had considered its insistence on referring to itself as ‘this system’ extremely creepy. “It may be to our advantage to encourage this view, since he seems to have fond memories of the Asylum.”

Bruce said nothing. He’d always thought Joker rather liked the Asylum, in his own idiosyncratic way. He certainly never seemed to mind terribly being taken back there, and his only consistent complaint was that there weren’t as many people to play with inside as there were in Gotham. But then tonight (or maybe it was last night, Bruce didn’t know how long he’d slept) he’d seen proof that the Asylum was actually a hell-hole that starved and tortured its patients. Letting him think he’s in the Asylum might remind him of the old days, when it was the closest thing to a home he had, or it might just bring back unpleasant memories of the recent past and trigger one of his ‘violent episodes’ (Doctor Strange’s term, not Bruce’s).

“Neither confirm or deny,” Bruce told the computer. “We’ll deal with the fallout when it happens.”

“Very well. There is one other thing.” The computer sounded unsure, nervous, despite its still robotic voice. The latest upgrade to the system’s personality chips had been effective. (Personally Bruce didn’t see why the thing needed a personality, it worked just as well without, but Babs was determined, said she wouldn’t have him being left alone when they were all gone, and he’d long since learned not to argue with Babs, just as stubborn as her father and more than willing to manipulate him, if it was in a good cause).

“What?”

“Joker is extremely dirty. Adequate washing facilities have not yet been installed in the ATT, and the Joker is at a greatly increased risk of infection while unwashed.”

“I’m going to have to sponge bath the Joker,” Bruce said, in a tone almost of wonder. Just yesterday, he had been so numb, so tired of life and its endless predictability, that he’d willingly let a man shoot him, and now here he was preparing to give the same man a sponge bath. Gotham never failed to surprise him. He had forgotten that about her.

It's not necessarily a good thing, but it's something he'd forgotten about her.

"Breakfast first," he says. He's not facing a naked Joker without some sustenance. Most men get less of a threat the more vulnerable you make them. He knows from long experience that the same is not true of Joker.

Bruce lingers over his breakfast, as much as it's possible to linger over black coffee and a protein bar. He's not normally one to procrastinate, but right now his life is one in which he has never handled the Joker's genitalia, and he wants to preserve that state of affairs for as long as possible, even if only for a few more minutes.

"What's the best way to do this," Bruce asks, when he's chewed the last mouthful of protein bar for so long that it's turned to puree in his mouth, and he has to swallow it or be sick. "He's pretty filthy."

"Normally, I would advise a shower," the computer says. "However it would not be advisable for him to put any weight on his feet for at least a week, even if he were capable of standing. And it would not be feasible for you to wash him in the shower while holding him," (Bruce shudders at the mental image of trying to wash armfuls of wet and wriggling Joker without falling and cracking his head open) "so a sponge bath remains our best option. You'll just have to be thorough. I believe there's bleach and wire-wool under the sink in the lab."

Bruce blinks. Had his computer just made a joke? Babs' AI tech was obviously more advanced than he'd realized. It was supposed to be a learning system, but a sense of humor was several orders of intelligence higher than learning to anticipate his needs.

"I think we'll start with something a little gentler," he says, just in case it hadn't been a joke, "and work up to more serious measures."

"As you wish," the electronic voice says, and despite its artificial tone, it sounds amused.

Washing Joker using a bucket seems somehow callous, but it's also sensible, so Bruce fills a red plastic pail with hot water. He's only got bars of soap, he realizes, which won’t be much use here. He considers it for a long moment, and then remembers the basket of toiletries Cassie had given him for Christmas (because he already has every weapon she could think of, and Dick told her that toiletries or socks are the usual substitutes for actually thoughtful gifts, and she didn't know what size his feet are). It's still sitting on the floor beside the shower, forlornly gathering dust, and Bruce rummages through it and finds a bottle of shower gel and another of bubble bath. They're supposed to smell of honeysuckle (because gender norms are something Cassie's never really grasped) and Bruce has no idea if Joker's allergic to honeysuckle, or any of the chemicals they make these things out of (Joker's skin always looks so delicate to Bruce, every vein showing under the paper-white skin, and bruises forming almost as soon as Bruce touches him) but on the other hand, he's seen Joker drink prototypes of Crane's fear toxin, so he's probably immune to most things.

He doesn't actually know whether bubble bath contains any cleaning agents or whether it's just bubbles (the bottle is completely unhelpful, only informing him that it will 'transport him on a relaxing journey', so he tips in some of each, and then stirs the resultant mixture with a sponge until it begins to foam up.

The difficult thing, Bruce finds, it knowing where to start. The logical thing seems to be to start at the feet and work up, but that's not really an option with Joker's feet still swathed in bandages. He'll start at the head, he decides, carrying the bucket to the top of the table.

"Am I okay to wash the burns?" Bruce asks. They haven't been dressed, still showing shiny and red amongst the green.

"Absolutely, but be gentle," the computer says. "Joker appears to be unusually sensitive to pain."

Bruce almost laughs. Joker, sensitive to pain? He's seen the man walk on a broken ankle. He'd managed to carry Bruce down to the Batmobile when his every footstep left a streak of his gore on the pavement. He’s more resistant to pain than anyone Bruce has ever met except perhaps for Vandal Savage. But as he’s thinking that, his hand brushes against Jokers head, a subconscious test perhaps, and Joker lets out this broken little whimper of pain, and Bruce realizes just how in control Joker normally is, because if that simple brush of a hand against half-healed wounds had hurt enough to make him cry out, he must truly have felt every wound and injury he'd ever received. Bruce is equal parts awed and appalled.

He takes a deep breath and runs the sponge over Joker’s head. Joker moans and shudders, his whole body shaking with pain, and Bruce snatches his hand back like he’s been burnt, heart racing .

He’s being ridiculous. He knows he’s being ridiculous. Battered and bruised as Joker is, there’s really no way to do this without hurting him. But right now Joker is vulnerable, and defenseless, and doing anything to hurt him, even for his own good, makes Bruce feel like everything he’s ever fought not to become.

The twins, he reminds himself. You can be gentle. You just need to remember how. Remember how Red still loves her Uncle Bruce, because even though she was the tiniest most delicate thing you’d ever seen, when Jason put her into your arms and told you to take better care of her than you did of him, you were gentle with her. Remember bandaging injured animals as a child, feeling the frantic heartbeats of rabbits and birds under your small fingers. Remember stitching up Dick, awed beyond words that this boy would risk everything for you, so so determined not to hurt him, to be worthy of his faith. You did it for them. You can do it for him.

Calmed and reassured, he begins again, keeping the strokes of the sponge even and not too light, but as gentle as he knows how, and he’s rewarded when Joker only sucks in a sudden breath as Bruce cleans his burns, no whimper of pain this time.

His hair, short as it is, is filthy. Mud and blood and something that looks like dried brain matter clinging to the short strands. It’s been cut inexpertly he finds when he carefully lifts Joker’s head. The hair at the back is longer, and at the nape of his neck, where it’s longest of all, it’s tangled, the knots held together by blood. Bruce teases the hairs apart with dexterous fingers, feeling the satisfaction of a job well done when he's able to run his fingers through it and encounter only clean, finger combed hair. There’s been so much destruction in his job recently, it’s nice to feel he’s repairing something for a change.

He takes his time with Joker’s face, still nervous, expecting every fleeting touch to trigger a violent reaction. Instead Joker mumbles something, too low and garbled for Bruce to make out, and nuzzles against Bruce’s hand. Bruce fights down a wholly inappropriate smile, and takes to opportunity to wash behind Joker’s ears.

Bruce wrings out the sponge, soaks it again, and begins carefully wiping grime from Joker’s neck. He’s as careful as he knows how to be, as careful as he is when dealing with volatile chemicals, because the throat is the most vulnerable part of the human body, and for all his pretence, Joker hates being vulnerable with a terrifying intensity.

"Tickles," Joker mutters, the first coherent words he's spoken out loud since Bruce regained consciousness.

"Sorry," Bruce says, and presses a little harder with the sponge. "I was trying not to hurt you."

Joker laughs, not his usual explosion of mirth, hilarity so intense it looks painful, but a soft little chuckle, disturbingly normal. "You'll never make it in here with an attitude like that kiddo," he says. His eyes are still shut, but he tips his head as though he's staring at Bruce.

"Oh?" Bruce asks disingenuously.

"We've had a few doctors who didn't want to hurt people before," Joker says. "They mostly died. ''Cept the ones who are in here permanently now, if you know what I mean."

Bruce does. It's been decades since Joker was last allowed counseling sessions, a reaction to his tendency to drive his psychiatrists mad. They were running out of cells in Arkham for them all. Bruce isn't even sure he always did it deliberately.

"I'm tough," Bruce says in response, unsure how far he should go to play along with Joker's belief that he's in Arkham.

Joker chuckles. "Sure you are, doll face. And you've been out of school for all of what? A week?"

Bruce wonders who it is Joker is seeing, whether it's someone specific or some figment of his imagination.

"Harleen's a nice name," Joker says, answering Bruce's unasked question. "Unusual. I like it."

"Er, thanks?" Bruce hazards, even less sure that playing along is a good idea now Joker thinks he's Harley.

Bruce rinses the sponge again, and starts on Joker's chest. It's the least dirty part of him, but that's really not saying much.

"Used to know a Harleen," Joker says, after a minute. "Nice kid. Pretty smile."

Not Harley then, Bruce thinks. Some figment of Joker's imagination with the same name.

"What happened to her?" Bruce is pushing his luck probably, but this is a rare chance at an unfiltered view of Joker's mind.

"She broke," Joker says, voice mournful. "And all the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn't put Harley together again. The Bat held a funeral for her. Headstone and everything."

"Tell me about the Bat."

Joker bursts into peals of laughter, and Bruce thinks it's from his question, but then he remembers that he's washing Joker's armpits (Dick is right, Bruce definitely must have done something terrible in a past life). "He's biiiiig," Joker says, opening his eyes for the first time. They're clouded with fever, not seeing anything outside Joker's mind. "And he can fly. And he's got glowing eyes. And he'll eat up all the horrid little rat people, crunch crunch." Joker laughs again, so hard Bruce has to grab hold of his arms to keep him from toppling off the table. "Cannibalism," Joker wheezes out, in between peals of manic laughter. "It's cannibalism."

"Hold still," Bruce tells him sharply, irritated at not getting a more coherent answer. "I'm going to wash your arms."

Joker goes obediently still, watching with apparent interest as Bruce briskly scrubs Joker's arms and soaks the blood off his fingers.

"My head hurts," Joker says, after a blessedly long minute of silence.

"You're dehydrated, running a fever, you probably damaged your spine when you dislocated your own hip, and there's a fair chance you've got lasting brain damage from IGA's experimental ECT. I'd be amazed if you didn't."

Joker frowns. "You're a doctor," he says petulantly. "You're supposed to be sympathetic!"

"I'm not deliberately hurting you," Bruce grunts. "What more do you want?"

Joker laughs, wriggling the fingers Bruce is trying to clean.

"I like you," Joker says decisively. "You've got moxy. Plus you're pretty."

Bruce wonders with amusement who Joker's seeing. "You don't actually give a damn what I look like," he points out, because as much as Joker likes to flirt, with anyone and everyone, from what Bruce knows of him, he's actually even less interested in sex than Bruce is.

"Do to," Joker protests. "Your eyes are just the same colour as Batsy's."

The answer is so unexpected Bruce replies without thinking, “You know what colour my, I mean Batman’s, eyes are?” and then kicks himself for giving away his identity. Joker’s so deep in his fever dream he doesn’t appear to notice.

“I know eeeeeverything about my Bat,” Joker says happily. “He thinks he’s 6’2” but he’s actually about a third of an inch shorter than that, and he uses Truman’s shampoo and Turo shaving cream, and he must have injured his left hand pretty badly at some point before I met him, because his grip’s weaker on that side, and he used to wear Armani aftershave when he wasn’t being the Bat and…”

“You don’t know what he looks like out of the suit,” Bruce says, just to interrupt the horribly intimate analysis.

“No,” Joker agrees, voice wistful. “But I dream about it.” He wriggles on the table, and Bruce is horrified to notice when he glances down that the maniac is starting to get hard, his cock chubbing up.

For one mad moment, Bruce thinks of taking him in hand, imagines Joker's flesh, satin smooth and blistering hot, hardening in his hand, imagines Joker's breath hitching, and then as quickly as it had arrived, the madness passes, leaving Bruce shaken and disgusted with himself.

He's silent as he washes Joker's stomach, all his attention focussed on not thinking.

Joker's belly isn't as soft as it looks, fragile skin stretched taunt over wiry muscles that flutter when Joker speaks.

"What happened?" Joker asks.

Bruce shoots him an enquiring look, not sure that Joker can see him, but still not entirely trusting his voice.

"What happened to me?" Joker elaborates. "Why am I in the medical facility instead of my warm cosy cell?"

So far, playing along with Joker's delusion that he's in Arkham has worked out, he's being unusually quiet and obedient, so Bruce says, "You attacked another patient. It took four guards ten minutes to separate you."

Joker chuckles weakly. "He was asking for it," he says with satisfaction, his fevered mind already filling in the blanks in Bruce's story. "No one steals my pudding cups."

Bruce doesn't know whether to be amused or horrified that Joker assumes the reason he's so badly hurt must be something as trivial as pudding.

"Did I kill him?" Joker asks.

"They didn't tell me," Bruce replies. He has no idea who it is Joker thinks he's been fighting with, so playing dumb seems safest.

He rinses the sponge again, but it comes out cool.

“I need to get more water,” he tells Joker. “This is going cold.”

“Take your time, Harleykins,” Joker says magnanimously. “Not like I’m going anywhere.”

He isn’t strapped down, since the arms of the ATT could catch him before he even sat up, but he seems to be under the impression that he is, keeping his shoulders flat against the table even when he wriggles.

It takes a minute for the shower to run hot, and Bruce takes the chance to lean against the wall and just breathe. Above him a carved stone face smiles a serene little smile. Bruce stares at it, makes himself remember every detail of the person it represents, remember the sensation of fingers slipping through his own, the sound of 500lbs of meat and bone hitting the sidewalk. Makes himself remember the woman he didn’t save, so he’ll remember why he has to save everyone else.

When his heart-rate has slowed, and he's reminded himself in graphic detail just why he's doing this, he fills the bucket and makes his slow stiff way back over to the med-bay.

He checks the display screen on the ATT on his way past, and sees that Joker's temperature has risen again. All the same, when his patient (or should that be prisoner?) turns to look at him, his eyes are clearer.

"Who're you?" he demands, and Bruce suddenly remembers that he's not wearing his mask. It's an unnerving realisation. It's been decades since he was comfortable going bare-faced, and it’s frightening to realise he could have forgotten he wasn’t wearing it while around an enemy as dangerous as Joker.

“I’m the same person I was three minutes ago,” Bruce tells him, because that’s as good a lie as any. “You’re running a fever. You’re hallucinating.”

“So I’m hallucinating that I’m in a big cave being washed by someone with Batsy’s eyes?” Joker asks, a hint of a true smile playing at the corners of his elastic mouth.

"Definitely," Bruce tells him. "Can you sit up?"

He manages it with one of Bruce's arms under his shoulders to lift him, and then he sits slumped forward like a broken doll, only Bruce's restraining arm keeping him from falling so far forward that his head touches his knees.

Bruce awkwardly rewets the sponge, crouching to reach the bucket without dropping Joker, then stands, pulling Joker to rest against his chest and squeezing out the sponge against the nape of Joker's neck, feeling him shiver as the warm water runs in rivulets down his back, leaving white streaks in the mixture of dried blood and dirt.

Joker's back is a mass of scars under the dirt. Bruce runs the cloth over them, memorising them.

There's the puckered scar of a bullet wound on his upper back. The bullet must have been stopped by his ribs, since there's no corresponding exit wound on his chest. Bruce can see that if he were to lay a hand on Joker's scapula, he'd feel an unevenness where part of the bone was chipped away by the bullet.

There are hundreds of tiny jagged white scars, like he'd landed on broken glass, and underneath it all, faded with time, rows of straight scars that he recognises as the marks of a whipping.

"Do you remember where you got these?" Bruce asks, running a finger along one of the pale marks.

Joker shrugs. "Sure. I can remember. Can remember lots of versions. Which one do you want?"

"Whichever one's true," Bruce says, scrubbing hard at a stubborn patch of dirt. Joker winces, and Bruce realises guiltily that it's actually a bruise, gone a dirty yellow-green as it healed.

"Ah, well, that would be the trick wouldn't it?" Joker says with a grin. "I'd be a very different man if I could answer questions like that."

Bruce wonders if that's true, then realises that that's the wrong question, and wonders instead if Joker believes it.

Joker's back is now as clean as it's going to get, at least without hurting him, so he has no justification for how long he keeps slowly rubbing the sponge over scarred skin, except that he's a coward, trying to delay the inevitable.

He can't put if off forever though, so he bites the bullet and slides an arm under Joker's waist, hoisting him up off the table and running the clothe quickly over his patients ass, and along his crack. He's absurdly grateful for Joker's pliant state when, instead of the lascivious comments he's expecting, his actions only prompt a pleased hum and Joker turning to rest his head of Bruce's shoulder.

"Careful Harleykins," the maniac murmurs, sounding pleased and a little sleepy. "I'm a married man."

"No you're not," Bruce replies, laying Joker down as gently as he can.

"Batsy's saved my life 137 time," Joker says smugly. "That's practically the same thing."

Bruce bites his lip to keep from pointing out that he only keeps saving him because Joker keeps putting himself in danger, or that he's saved Dick's life far more often. It wouldn't help the situation.

"He'd wear a tuxedo," Joker says, dreamily, "And his mask, and I'd wear that green checked dress I've been saving for a special occasion. Do you think Batsy can dance? Or will I need to teach him?"

"He doesn't seem like the dancing type," Bruce says, because he’s never much liked dancing.

“That’s okay,” Joker says agreeably. “I can teach him. I looove dancing. Me and Harley used to dance all the time, you know? The other Harley, I mean. Boy could she dance.” He sighs wistfully. “What a gal.”

If Bruce were his normal self, if he weren’t lost and depressed and feeling strangely gentle, he’d have pointed out that not once when she was alive had Joker ever said anything nice to Harley. Would have pointed out that he’d driven her to his death. But he’s not that man, not right now, so he says nothing and rewets the sponge.

“I’m going to wash your genetalia now,” he tells Joker instead, because it seems like warning the clown is probably a good idea.

Joker chuckles and spreads his legs, all his melancholy of a moment ago forgotten. “If you bad-touch me, I’ll tell my Bat, and he’ll come for you,” he warns. “Unless you’re really good at it. Then it can be our little secret.” He grins, that familiar ricktus of a grin, the one that’s both terrifying and reassuring, because no face should stretch like that, but it’s still a touch-stone in Bruce’s life, a reference point to which they always return.

“I am not here to grope you, Joker,” Bruce tells him sharply.

“Your loss,” Joker tells him, shrugging. He’s starting to sweat again, eyes unfocussed, and his voice is strained. It won’t be long until he passes out again.

Joker’s body is almost completely hairless. Bruce hadn’t really noticed it, or hadn’t thought about it, until now, confronted with the bare skin of Joker’s groin. He’s heard it said that shaving away the pubic hair is supposed to make the penis appear larger, but Joker’s penis looks, not small necessarily (he’s very carefully not making any kind of mental notes about the size and shape of Joker’s cock), but oddly naked and somehow pathetic, lying quiescent, slumped against the disconcertingly mauve skin of Joker’s balls. It’s somehow the most human looking part of Joker, perhaps because the colour of the skin there is closer to a normal flesh tone. Paler than average, but at least not paper white.

Bruce keeps his movements quick and economical, wishing he had his gloves on when he has to lift Joker’s cock out of the way to wash his balls. Joker stays quiet, eyes shut, breathing shallowly. When Bruce touches the back of his hand to Joker’s forehead, he finds it burning hot. The fever hasn’t yet run its course.

Joker remains silent, either unconscious or lost somewhere inside his own mind, as Bruce quickly cleans his legs, wiping away the splashes of mud and sand from his calves, and the dried sweat from the backs of his knees.

When he’s finished, he throws the sponge back into the bucket, and stands for a long moment, just staring down at his prisoner.

“He can’t go back to that place,” he says aloud. “Not after this.”

“He has seen the inside of the cave, and your face” the computer reminds him. “Your identity is compromised.”

“So we keep him here,” Bruce says. The idea has been there in his mind since the moment he awoke, but now it takes shape, becomes a certainty. “It’s the only way. As long as he’s here with me, Gotham’s safe from him. And he’s safe from Gotham.”


End file.
